Increasing Popularity of MIT OpenCourseWare | Hacker News Reader

Increasing Popularity of MIT OpenCourseWare

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86 pointsaudreyw39 comments

I currently work in Higher-ed and I'm really excited to see what the long term effects of things like OCW and the Khan academy are going to have on education. The simplest benefit is mediocre teachers will have a harder time hiding their incompetency, and all students will have access to the best teachers. When I took my algorithms class I followed along with the MIT lectures. My prof was okay, but nowhere near the level of competency of the L from CLRS and Erik Demaine.

More interesting is the challenge these things pose to the authority of the entire system of higher education. What's going to happen when most top student at non-top schools get most of their lecture materials from someplace else? I can easily imagine a near future where most interested undergrad calc students learn from Sal Khan and only show up to class for exams. What does a degree mean when one student has done the exact same course work as another only for free? Autodidacts previously had suffered somewhat from lacking structured course work, but that problem is resolved. If you're motivated enough you can design your own education path which will most likely be more efficient than traditional ones.

The obvious answer for higher-ed is to capitalize on what OCW and Khan can't offer: office hours, peer interaction, working on a research team, and lab time. Unfortunately, universities are almost incapable of rapid adaptation to change (we still put on silly medieval hats when we graduate).

I'm sure I'm not the only person on Hacker News to have taken advantage of OpenCourseWare. If any of the MIT folks are reading this thread, I'd just like to offer my sincere thanks for the good work you do.

There was a minor controversy on campus when OpenCourseWare was being rolled out. Some students thought opening up the courses was unfair since they worked hard to get in and paid $30k+ per year to attend MIT.

I'm glad these folks didn't win that debate ;)

I'm currently working on a startup to push what MIT has done even further. If you're willing to provide some feedback, then drop me an email for a preview.

can u tell us what exactly you're trying to do ... thx

Sorry for the teaser! The site will be a one stop shop for online learning from high school to college, to working professionals.

I've set up a live video platform to connect experts in specific subject areas to interested students with an integrated payment system for teachers that want to charge for their time.

We also plan to roll out a few exciting features for college students. We'd like to connect students studying a specific subject to be able to easily interact with other college students studying a similar subject. So if you were studying 6.001 at MIT we could connect you either via live video or a stackoverflow like Q&A site to other students at Stanford studying a similar course.

I hope this conveys the essence of the site. I'm not yet ready for the full launch, but stay tuned....As I mentioned before, drop me an email if you'd like to preview and give some feedback.

Wow, that sounds great. I'd be very interested in this. Do you think you may have plans for taking the age range down also? I have two kids - 8 years old and 3 years old and a great resource for all the basis, as well as some more advanced topics would be really useful

I eventually want to focus on younger kids. But I want to be super careful screening any teachers that would be allowed to teach young children over live video, so this may take a while for me to find the right instructors.

Shoot me an email, and I'll let you know when I have something appropriate for your children. You can also check out the site in the meantime.

i liked your idea ... in fact i was thinking for someone to start an online collge/university who can also offer diplomas and degrees based on open courseware ... by the way connecting student is being done by OpenStudy (http://openstudy.com/) so you may study the pros and cons and implement a better platform or may be tie-up with them ... I wish you all the best.

I'm working on exactly that! Got a large part already working. Want to talk? My email is in my profile.

“There was a minor controversy on campus when OpenCourseWare was being rolled out. Some students thought opening up the courses was unfair since they worked hard to get in and paid $30k+ per year to attend MIT.”

I got angry just reading that. Apparently the admissions process at the university wasn't thorough enough.

Try living in a country where none of the universities are in the top-50 or top-100 rankings.

Between programs like OCW and Khan Academy, how long can education costs continue to increase at their current rates?

I can't imagine students in the future accepting paying $50k? $60k? more? per year when the opportunity exists for inexpensive and high quality programs online. Maybe a lower cost hybrid program would work (to allow for better peer and faculty interaction) or at least the acceptance of an online degree. Probably not immediate future - but I imagine that changes to our higher education system will come.

http://www.collegescholarships.org/research/student-loans/

Presumably at places like MIT the credential value of a degree is still worth a lot, particularly for those looking for careers in credential-reliant sectors such as academia, but one wonders for how long second- and third-tier institutions with low or no credential value can continue when excellent and free programs like this are so widely available.

I asked this of a friend who went to SVA in New York for graphic design. He said that the real benefit of an excellent, yet expensive, college, is in learning from real people and having the course tailored to the current situation. He said the students, while talented, weren't any different from those at another college. Sure, you can learn how to design by yourself, and many of the greats have, but it's much more efficient to learn from a master.

Feedback, really. A good college is partially about good company, and partially about great professors.

Right now there's a ton of information, but it's tantamount to books, and PBS videos. Once there's an online college, to help guide the student through the material, there'll be a real revolution. Until then, OpenCourseware will strictly be for those who know where they're going.

I think an apprenticeship combined with online material would be more valuable and definitely more practical from a financial standpoint.

I agree completely. I'm a CS student at MIT and I've used OCW here and there to supplement courses or to fill in when I've missed a lecture, etc. It definitely helps and it's nice to have all those resources. I think it's a great service. But honestly, I think the value of my education comes from being around tons of people who are really brilliant (and make me feel dumb heheh). Seeing a problem set online and working on it by yourself is way different than working with a group of people and seeing how they think and gaining new perspectives. Also, of course, going to college is far more than just the in-class education. There are research opportunities, competitions, etc... and the social aspects obviously. I also have the option of going to office hours, talking to TAs/professors, etc. Interaction is what's lacking in OCW but maybe that's something that will happen in the future.

I completely agree with you .. several times i've been in debate with my friends (and they just dont get it) that cost of education is going to go lower and lower (and not higher as it is surveyed & assumed) - the only thing that would matter is quality of teachers/teaching environment ...

i think it's great startup idea to create an online college based on open courseware and conduct virtual classes and group sessions to help students - also eventually offer degrees ...

Depending on the degree, you can wind up getting access to things you don't get through OCW alone. As a biology student, I was able to get involved in research and help with tagging & tracking elephant seals, and when I switched to engineering I got access to thousands and thousands of dollars in equipment and software, among other things.

The resources of a full-on University are part of what make it worthwhile, at least for science-y degrees.

The downside of OCW is that, as good as it is, I often find it frustrating because of what's missing from the content for a course.

For instance, I don't find ppt slides very useful by themselves, without the additional context that would be provided by the lecturer.

If you attended the lecture, the points in the slides could help you remember the details. But if you never heard the details, it's often not clear what you're supposed to make of the points in the slides.

For instance, a slide listing sort algorithms for large datasets might mention bubble sort. If you know about bubble sort already, you might assume (probably correctly) that it's there as a joke or as the "definitely wrong choice". If you don't know anything about bubble sort, you might assume it's given as a perfectly valid algorithm like the others listed.

Since it's free, my grumbling is limited. But it does frustrate me at times.

Aren't a lot of the OCW Lectures available as well? Doesn't that resolve the issue.

It's highly variable. Some classes have full video, which is great. Others, perhaps the majority, have much less material. That's part of why it's frustrating.

You see an interesting course listed. You go to the page for the course. Then you click around and it turns out that there isn't much content posted.

About a year ago there was a rash of pessimistic opinion articles on how technology has done little to nothing to further education in the U.S., and that attempts to modernize schools have mostly failed.

But a couple of months ago I came home from work early and my kids, 3 and 5, who are home-schooling, were both sitting in front of computers learning the alphabet and arithmetic, respectively, and having a blast. My wife was monitoring them and preparing the 5 year old's language lesson from a curriculum she found online.

The thought struck me that technology may have done very little for traditional education, but it just may have completely revolutionized education for my kids. I'm excited that they'll be able to explore any interest they have in a depth that was unavailable to me as a child for lack of resources.

Agreed. We're Americans living in Argentina (http://homeschoolargentina.com though not frequently updated); we're homeschooling three kids, and one of the programs we use (among many) is EPGY, a program through Stanford University for kids as young as six. It brings together kids from all over the world for incredibly hands-on teaching from world-class professors.

The resources that our kids have access to such as this make an education that wasn't even possible a decade ago almost trivial.

While we are at it, don't forget about http://academicearth.org/. They've done a great job of wrangling all of these sites together. Something nice about being able to jump from circuit design at MIT to Civil War lectures at Yale in just a couple clicks.

I like Gilbert Strang's math courses, and Robert Gallager's Digital communications.

On the other coast, I like Stephen Boyd's Linear Dynamical Systems and Convext Optimization courses quite well. I wish Stanford would do more like these.

Yes, the Robert Gallager lectures on Digital Communications I. So nice to see lectures from one of the key people that made the field what it is today.

i wish there was institutions who could start giving diplomas/degrees based on exams passed from these course-wares ... though University Of People is doing a fantastic job and we need few more of those so that education is FREE for all no matter what socio-economic condition you come from as far as you have passion for the subject you can earn a degree or even a masters (No GRE , No GMAT or no other entrance exam BS)...

I salute to the people who conceive and implement this kind of ideas...

I'd never heard of it, but I've just signed up for one via iTunes U. These look awesome. It will be interesting to see where the world of education goes in the next decade. Personally I'm looking for resources for younger children (5-15) for my own children

Kahn Academy, also available on I-Tunes U, has some great material for younger learners.

It's Khan.

KHAAANNN!!!!!

This is one of the only things that really annoys me about these courses, is that they are often only available via iTunes U. I don't have, nor do I want, iTunes. I shouldn't have to fire up a VM to access "open" content. I deal with it but it bugs the crap out of me.

Actually, I believe all OCW courses are available via YouTube, or for download at http://ocw.mit.edu as MP4.

Stanford's SEE course are available via YouTube, download, and bittorent.

I like watching them on my iPad off the grid. So having them in iTune-U is nice.

Cool. There are other Uni's that do not provide other options however.

This is available outside of iTunes on YouTube (I think). I understand your reasoning, but as I do have iTunes it makes a very nice, seamless way of subscribing to their content, which can then be shared across my various devices (iphone / iPad etc). I even have a projector in my lounge attached to a Mac Mini that I've started using for this rather than just for movies

You can also find them here: http://nixty.com/courses/directory?category=0&school=1&#...

All of the OCW courses are available on Udemy: http://www.udemy.com/courses/Academics.html. (Disclosure: I am the co-founder of Udemy)

If I'm not wrong, we have the largest library of OCW courses on the internet (equivalent to YouTube's).

Nice: lecture notes on computational complexity: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-405j-advanced-comp...

>OpenCourseware might have been investigating a pay-wall ... So that would've made it 'courseware'. Even though the material is worth a modest fee, I am glad to find out that it will remain free. Not for my own pockets well being, but for others who don't have even those few bucks to spare.

I love the MIT OpenCourseware. But, Most courses don't have videos yet.

Also, I like Kahn,s approach more. You don't need to see the lecturer, but you need to be able to clearly read the blackboard. Also, colors are nice.

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